David King’s complaint (as well as similar complaints by IPCC and Carl Wunsch) were considered under Practice 7.11 which states:

“If a programme alleges wrongdoing or incompetence or makes other significant allegations, those concerned should normally be given an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond.”

We are not taking here about misrepresentations (section 2.2) or due impartiality (section 5), but the right of criticized parties to be offered an “appropriate and timely opportunity to respond”.

King’s complaint pertained to a statement by Fred Singer at the end of Swindle:

“There will still be people who believe that this is the end of the world – particularly when you have, for example, the chief scientist of the UK telling people that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the earth will be the Antarctic. And humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic. I mean this is hilarious. It would be hilarious actually if it weren’t so sad”

Ofcom carefully considered whether Singer’s statement amounted to an allegation of “incompetence” or something similar, giving rise to a requirement to provide King with a timely opportunity to respond. Here they considered the allegation in two parts: (1) the “only habitable” place comment (King admitted that he had said that it would be the “most habitable place on earth”) and (2) the “breeding couples” comment (perhaps Ofcom was thinking ahead to the Sportxxxgirls case.)

The “Only Habitable Place”
Ofcom stated that King’s complaint referred only to his original testimony to the House of Commons Select Committee on April 24, 2004 in which he had stated:

“Fifty-five million years ago was a time when there was no ice on the earth; the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals, because it was the coolest place, and the rest of the earth was rather inhabitable because it was so hot. It is estimated that it [the carbon dioxide level] was roughly 1,000 parts per million then, and the important thing is that if we carry on business as usual we will hit 1,000 parts per million around the end of the century.”

He complained that the programme had exaggerated his speech by replacing “most habitable” with “the only habitable”.

Channel 4 observed that on April 27, 2004, Sir David gave a speech to Tony Blair’s Climate Group launch, in which he was reported in U.K. newspapers as using the phrase “only uninhabitable continent”. The following quotes were introduced by Channel 4 and noted in the Ofcom decision:

“Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King said last week. He said the Earth was entering the ‘first hot period’ for 60 million years when there was no ice on the plane and “the rest of the globe could not sustain human life”.
(The Independent on Sunday, 2 May 2004)

Sir David replied that he had used the following phrase no both speeches:

“55 million years ago the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals.”

Channel 4 observed that “there was no evidence to suggest that Sir David had been quoted inaccurately as in the three years since the first report in 2004 there was no attempt to correct or challenged them.”

In response, Sir David:

Sir David maintained the programme had clearly presented a distortion of his views. Sir David said that he did not say or imply that the Antarctic was ever the ONLY habitable place for mammals, still less was he making a prediction that it would be the only or even the most, habitable place for mammals if CO2 concentrations reached similar concentrations in the future.

Didn’t I warn you that it would seem like a Monty Python episode (and we’re only halfway so far.)

I think you said this in 2004, at least it suggested you did, that there might be a stage when the only inhabitable place on Earth will be Antarctica – do you remember saying that?

and said that he had been “misquoted many, many times” and said that he had merely recommended investments in Antarctic real estate:

I certainly didn’t say that, I’ve been totally misquoted many, many times; always pleased to have the opportunity to correct the statement I made. What I did say was that if you go back 55 million years, it’s in the palæological record that Antarctica was a tropical forest and at that point in time, if you wanted to have some real estate, and these were my words, you would want it in Antarctica because the rest of the world was pretty damned hot. So that has been extrapolated to me saying that if we keep going in this way there will only be people left living in Antarctica.

“Fifty-five million years ago was a time when there was no ice on the earth; the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals, because it was the coolest place, and the rest of the earth was rather inhabitable because it was so hot. It is estimated that it [the carbon dioxide level] was roughly 1,000 parts per million then, and the important thing is that if we carry on business as usual we will hit 1,000 parts per million around the end of the century.”

Back to Ofcom. The Committee duly noted the two sides of the story as follows:

The Committee noted that Professor Singer had attributed to Sir David the words “only habitable”, which Sir David said was incorrect as his original statements had used the words “most habitable”. The Committee also noted that contemporaneous, unchallenged reports, of Sir David’s comments, had referred to “only habitable”.

In the end, after all this careful consideration, they didn’t actually refer to this matter in their decision, only referring to the “breeding couples” issue, to which we now turn.

“Breeding Couples”

Sir David’s complaint stated that his original statement made no reference to the survival of humanity depending on “breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic”.

Channel 4 replied that Singer, in fact, was referring to reported quotes of two different scientists: King and Sir James Lovelock, another prominent scientist who had stated:

“Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” (The Independent, 16 January 2006)

Channel 4 argued that Singer did not specifically attribute the “breeding couples” quote to King, and, in any event, the quote would hardly result in unfairness to King given that

the complainant was on record as stating that Antarctica could be the “only habitable place on earth” and “the rest of the globe could not sustain human life”, it was therefore not unfair for the programme to suggest that Sir David was also of the view
that humanity may only survive due to breeding couples in the Antarctic. Channel 4 said Sir James Lovelock’s statement was a natural conclusion to be drawn from Sir David’s reported statement, and in essence the two statements said the same thing.

Even if Singer had conflated the views of King and Lovelock, they observed that “neither Channel 4 nor the programme makers were aware at the time of broadcast that Professor Singer had conflated two quotes from these eminent scientists.”

Ofcom carefully assessed the to-and-fro concluding as follows:

The Committee noted that, in recounting Sir David’s views on the dangers of global warming, Professor Singer had incorrectly attributed to Sir David a comment by the scientist Professor Lovelock regarding “breeding couples”. In relation to this Channel 4 had stated that “neither Channel 4 nor the programme makers were aware at the time of broadcast that Professor Singer had conflated [these] two quotes”.

In the Committee’s view, Professor Singer’s comment amounted to a significant allegation which called into question Sir David’s scientific views and his credibility as a scientist. In accordance with Practice 7.11 therefore, Sir David should have been offered an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond. The programme makers did not provide such an opportunity to the complainant. In the circumstances the Committee found that the failure to give Sir David King an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond to the comment made by Professor Singer resulted in unfairness to the complainant in the programme as broadcast.

David King on Breeding Couples

Since the alleged unfairness relates to the representation of David King’s view on breeding couples, I think that we should consider views on this topic that he has previously expressed.Last year, King opined that, in order to cure global warming, hot young girls:

“who find supercar drivers “sexy”, … should divert their affections to men who live more environmentally-friendly lives.

The right panel shows Jenni Dahlman, a former Miss Scandinavia, with Finnish race car driver, Kimi Raikonnen. This would presumably represent that the type of liaison that must be sacrificed if we are to cure global warming.

Instead of dashing young race car drivers, let’s try to get envisage a world in which the hot car babes were attracted to men who lived “more environmentally friendly lives” – a world that would look more like the one shown below:

Clearly the appropriate mea culpa would be for Channel 4 to dryly apologize for holding the Chief Scientist up to ridicule by incorrectly attributing to him Lovelock’s view that humanity would survive through Antarctic breeding couples, when they should properly said that his views on breeding were that hot girls who find “supercar drivers “sexy”, … should divert their affections to men who live more environmentally-friendly lives.”

Steve,
Thanks for posting numbers and figures I can grasp.
Seriously, King not only seems to believe man can regulate the climate, but also how boys and girls ought to go about the business of natural mating.
Has there ever been a regime in history that has gone so far?

Scene (IPCC officials sit in front of the “Big Board” showing a graphic of Antarctica.)

Secretary General Ban Ki “Buck” Moon: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each IPCC official. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as IPCC officials were concerned?
Dr. Climatelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each IPCC official will be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

RE: “Fifty-five million years ago was a time when there was no ice on the earth; the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals, because it was the coolest place, and the rest of the earth was rather inhabitable because it was so hot. It is estimated that it [the carbon dioxide level] was roughly 1,000 parts per million then, and the important thing is that if we carry on business as usual we will hit 1,000 parts per million around the end of the century.”

1000 PPMV apparently made the Earth a wonderful place, from the standpoint of supportable biomass. How long can the lies be allowed to continue? And by the way, we’ll never reach 1000PPMV again, and you can take that to the bank. We may not even reach 700 PPMV again. The innate tendency is for PPMV CO2 to be falling. We’ve slightly countered that, but this will not last. The real worry is, what will happen after the falling concentration resumes?

Sir David King is a surface scientist and might well be a very good one. However, his first serious error in the post of Chief Scientific Adviser to government was to bring in Professor Roy Anderson, a computer modeller specialising in the epidemiology of human diseases to advise on countermeasures during the foot-and-mouth epidemic in 2001. This led to contiguous culling and the death of millions of healthy animals. The veterinary profession was ignored when they suggested vaccination.

Another famous statement was that AGW was a more serious threat than international terrorism, The man seems to be an arrogant fool in just about any science other than surface chemistry

As a lay reader, my eyes glaze over at the scientific issues detailed in this posting as in others, but as always I do tend to pick up on the generalities so to speak. However, the time for my mental lurking sloppiness is over, and I wish to develop the intellectual infrastructure needed to fully “grasp” the items detailed in this post.

Steve McIntyre, if you will indulge us as you wish to have climate researchers indulge your own inquisitive nature, I would like to make the following requests for both myself and other lay readers who wish to better themselves intellectually.

Could you post:

1. Supplementary materials detailing with observational data, i.e. more photographic evidence of the subjects of attraction to which this article is referring.

2. Detailed research on the statistics relating to the behavioral aspects of the subjects, perhaps something more current than the seminal work “How to Pick Up Girls”.

3. And most importantly, a list of bibliographic references where the lay reader can expand for themselves on items 1 and 2.

Sir David King has a lot of form where saying strange things to the media is concerned. It seems that he doesn’t mind being misquoted by the Independent and the New Statesman when this exaggerates the dangers of AGW, but when Fred Singer does it he squeals like a stuck pig.

In a “discussion” about the Ofcom judgement on BBC Newsnight last night the time was spent discussing the “afront” to David King. There was NO discussion of the pros and cons of AGW. It seems like a set up job to concentrate on something unbelievably trivial in order to avoid any debate.

I’m appalled. Where is Lil’ Kim? (or are you keeping her for yourself?)

Steve: . She’s been one of the judges on the reality shows Search for the next Pussycat Doll and Girlicious. Check your cable channels. Or here’s Kim with some other girls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie8H91sxS_A who are obviously very ecologically conscious, as evidenced by not using more clothing than they need.

One should at least get his paleontology correct. 55 million years ago at the temperature peak of the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, mammalian life flourished everywhere on the planet. From the entry on Wikipedia:

Success was also enjoyed by the mammals, who radiated profusely around this time.

That seems rather at odds with Sir David King’s statement even if you allow that he may have been misquoted.

Oh, and the only mammals on Antarctica were probably marsupials who migrated there from South America and from there to Australia, at least according to this news article about the first mammalian fossil found on Antarctica.

The bad paraphrase of Sir David King’s views that landed Channel 4 in trouble (“Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent …”) was written by Geoffrey Lean, the award-winning Environment Editor of The Independent. Back in 2005, another award-winning Lean paraphrase had IPCC boss Dr Pauchari saying that without “deep cuts” in carbon outputs “We are risking the ability of the human race to survive”, which led to a big kerfuffle about the impartiality of the IPCC. You only (ha!) have to watch the videos of the conference in question to see that Pauchari said no such thing. Coincidence? I think we should be told.

Note to editors: Geoffrey Lean has been recognised by the United Nations Environment Programme as an “External Editor of Our Planet”.

I think it’s quite bizarre, but let’s assume that Durkin decided he had to give King an opportunity to respond, so he filmed a segment with him and stuck his response after Singer’s comment. Now say that in his response he said other controversial things about other people to support his point of view and refused to phrase his response differently. Would Durkin then have to interview the people who said those things and tack their interview on the end in pursuit of “balance”? What if THEY said things which were controversial? Where does it end?

Can’t a guy just film someone’s opinion and show it? Can’t people make up their own minds? I don’t see any actual misrepresentation here. Beyond that I don’t see what there is to be concerned about.

#44. Ofcom took note of the snarky nature of Singer’s remarks as constituting a personal slight against King. Their language is very clear and shows how authors could avoid this sort of problem:

Taking the above factors into consideration the Committee found that Professor
Singer had incorrectly attributed a comment about “breeding couples” to Sir
David. This distortion of the complainant’s views together with Professor Singer’s
suggestion that Sir David’s views were absurd (i.e. “I mean this is hilarious. It
would be hilarious actually if it weren’t so sad”) was serious given Sir David
King’s professional position and his reputation as an eminent UK scientist. In the
Committee’s view, Professor Singer’s comment amounted to a significant
allegation which called into question Sir David’s scientific views and his
credibility as a scientist. In accordance with Practice 7.11 therefore, Sir David
should have been offered an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond. The
programme makers did not provide such an opportunity to the complainant.

So there were a couple of things that could have mitigated the situation. First, don’t make the attribution error, conflating quotes from King and Lovelock. Getting this sort of detail right is one of the reasons why securities prospectuses take a lot of time. Lawyers and promoters try to get every little detail right because all too often it’s little things that open up complaints. Had Singer said “Uk’s chief scientist said this and …. an even more famous UK scientist said this….” then this would have removed a foothold.

Also had the producers sent the comment to King asking him for a reply, creating an audit trail of some due diligence as they somewhat did with IPCC (but not, in OFcom’s opinion, with sufficient diligence) that too would have removed an important ground of complaint. It wouldn’t have been very hard for the producers to have avoided this finding and with negligible impact on what they were trying to do.

The plate tectonic situation 55 m.y.a. is a critical point. Australia was yet to properly detach from Antarctica, so there was no such thing as the circum-Antarctic ocean current. Oceanic heat transport from the equator to the pole was thus much more efficient. My understanding is that this, rather than 1000 ppm CO2, is the reason why Antarctica was forested at 55 Ma.

I think you have left no doubt. Great writing, very funny. Great point John A about the lush forests in complete darkness. Obviously, plate tectonics has moved things around a bit. Great point Markin #46.

Mark Duffet is correct that we believe (and teach in our university) that the development of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current played a major role in the establishment of ice caps in Antarctica. This was associated with a raft of climatic shifts. So far I haven’t seen any convincing data to suggest that CO2 concentration had anything to do with it (Dr King’s assertions notwithstanding).

There have been various articles discussing the ability of trees such as Nothofagus to cope with extended periods of darkness, and there are photosynthetic species that survive both the cold and darkness of the present day climate. I don’t have references to hand because it is not my field.

What I did say was that if you go back 55 million years, it’s in the palæological record that Antarctica was a tropical forest and at that point in time, if you wanted to have some real estate, and these were my words, you would want it in Antarctica because the rest of the world was pretty damned hot.

Well, no. I have no idea what palaeological record Sir David is referring to, but it certainly isn’t our planet’s.

The Eocene global climate was perhaps the most homogeneous of the Cenozoic; the temperature gradient from equator to pole was only half that of today’s, and deep ocean currents were exceptionally warm.[3] The polar regions were much warmer than today, perhaps as mild as the modern-day Pacific Northwest; temperate forests extended right to the poles, while rainy tropical climates extended as far north as 45°. The difference was greatest in the temperate latitudes; the climate in the tropics however, was probably similar to today’s.[4]

[emphasis added]

A temperate forest is a far cry from a tropical forest. Although somehow I doubt there were forests or other terrestrial vegetation at the North Pole.

You know I once had a roomate in grad school whose name was neil.
I thought that was the only name in existence wherein the persons name described what he did. You and your name have proved that assumption
wrong.

Now, what do you call a guy with no arms and no legs making noise in the bushes?

re 52. thanks boris, he was always one of my heros. and of course you
know that none of this is personal, since I generally respect your opinion and online demeanor; but I was in one of those moods… cheers mate.

What is really sad is that Sir David King was for years the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser!

Wikipedia adds……
He strongly supports the work of the IPCC, saying in 2004 that the 2001 synthesis report is the best current statement on the state of play of the science of climate change, and that really does represent 1,000 scientists.
He has criticised the United States government for what he sees as its failures in climate change policy, saying it is: failing to take up the challenge of global warming.
Sir David’s rhetoric on climate change contrasts sharply, however, with the policies which he pursued while in office. In particular, he actively supported a UK government policy to restrict public access to information about the climate and climate change, including restrictions on the distribution of observed climate data, climate analysis data, climate reanalysis data, computer models of the climate and results from computer model simulations of the climate. These restrictions continue to this day (as of July 2008). The UK’s policies on climate change continue to severely restrict the ability of UK industry to understand the effects of climate and adapt to them, and UK industry typically has to rely on whatever information, data and models can be obtained from the US. Sir David has never explained the contradiction between his rhetoric and the policies he pursued in practice.

Actually, Sir David’s comment to the House of Lords is nonsensical! He seems to think that ‘inhabitable’ is an antonym of ‘habitable': ‘the rest of the earth was rather inhabitable because it was so hot’. It is actually, of course, a close synonym. What he meant to say, presumably, was ‘uninhabitable’.

… in respect to the presentation made by representatives of the so-called official team of the British government and the official British climate science, or at least how they introduced themselves at the seminar. I personally was surprised by the exceptionally poor content of the papers presented…
Simultaneously, they revealed an absolute—and I stress, absolute inability to answer questions concerning the alleged professional activities of the authors of these papers. Not only the ten questions that were published nine months ago, but not a single question asked during this two-day seminar by participants in the seminar, both Russian and foreign, were answered.
When it became clear that they could not provide a substantive answer to a question, three devices were used… The British participants insisted on introducing censorship during the holding of this seminar. The chief science adviser to the British government, Mr. King, demanded in the form of an ultimatum at the beginning of yesterday that the program of the seminar be changed and he presented an ultimatum demanding that about two-third of the participants not be given the floor.The participants in the seminar who had been invited by the Russian Academy of Sciences, they have been invited by the president of the Academy of Sciences Yuri Sergeyevich Osipov. Mr. King spoke about “undesirable” scientists and undesirable participants in the seminar. He declared that if the old program is preserved, he would not take part in the seminar and walk out taking along with him all the other British participants.
He has prepared his own program which he proposed, it is available here and my colleagues can simply distribute Mr. King’s hand-written program to change the program prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences and sent out in advance to all the participants in the seminar.
A comparison of the real program prepared by the Academy of Science and the program proposed as an ultimatum by Mr. King will give us an idea of what scientists, from the viewpoint of the chief scientific adviser to the British government, are undesirable. In the course of negotiations on this issue Mr. King said that he had contacted the British Foreign Secretary Mr. Straw who was in Moscow at the time and with the office of the British Prime Minister, Blair, so that the corresponding executives in Britain should contact the corresponding officials in Russia to bring pressure on the Russian Academy of Sciences and the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences to change the seminar’s program.When the attempt to introduce censorship at the Russian Academy of Sciences failed, other attempts were made to disrupt the seminar. At least four times during the course of the seminar ugly scenes were staged that prevented the seminar from proceeding normally. As a result we lost at least four hours of working time in order to try to solve these problems.
During these events Mr. King cited his conversations with the office of the British Prime Minister and had got clearance for such actions.
And thirdly, when the more or less normal work of the seminar was restored and when the opportunity for discussion presented itself, when questions on professional topics were asked, and being unable to answer these questions, Mr. King and other members of the delegation, turned to flight, as happened this morning when Mr. King, in an unprecedented incident, cut short his answer to a question in mid sentence realizing that he was unable to answer it and left the seminar room. It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government and the reputation of the title “Sir” has sustained heavy damage.

Re # 49. Pliny, the RSV does still function as a scientific society. In fact, on 13 September 2007 it was host to Dr. Jim Peacock, Chief Scientist of Australia, immediate past President of the Australian Academy of Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. His advertised title was “Science for Australia’s future’, but his actual subject was climate change.

Dr. Peacock’s one-page hand-out began “The challenge of climate change and the role of human activities contributing in a major way to the rapidity and magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions was not long ago the sole provenance of comment and attention by scientists”, and went on to say that “The evolution of argument, discussion and data acquisition have established the reality of climate change, removing it from disbelief, debate, at least among rationally thinking people.”

There did not appear to be any coloured illustrations such as Steve has supplied in the header here. I guess we were punished for not being “rationally thinking people”. The consolation is that Australia has consistently produced among the most beautiful ladies in the world. Surfers Paradise Beach is much more interesting than a meeting of toffs cobbling up a consensus on AGW.

Nothing eviscerates self-aggrandizing pomposity like wit. I just loved it. On a more serious note, and regarding King’s comment about mammals being restricted to Antarctica way back when: Permo-Triassic mammal-like reptiles, such as Cynognathus in the in the accompanying figure, as well as other, unrelated pan-Gondwanan species, were South Polar (actually considerably north of the pole) in distribution, because that’s where they evolved. Their eutherian descendants (placental mammals), including us, were undeterred by high latitudes – Ice Age megafauna, etc.

thanks boris, he was always one of my heros. and of course you know that none of this is personal, since I generally respect your opinion and online demeanor; but I was in one of those moods… cheers mate.

July 22nd, 2008 at 6:37 pm
[….]
A temperate forest is a far cry from a tropical forest. Although somehow I doubt there were forests or other terrestrial vegetation at the North Pole.

The Arctic Sea was at the North Pole at 55 million years ago, so the opportunity for forests was precluded. However, forests of dawn redwood and swamp cypress existed very nearby on the northernmost reaches Ellesmere Island. Tropical forests of palms existed in Alaska and England.

Antarctica had a variety of warm temperate and cold temperate forests along its coasts and into the interior of the continent to at least within 400 miles of the South Pole. Actual pieces of wood were recovered from forests existing within 250 miles of the South Pole in the Permian. It remains possible that future discoveries of fossils and/or wood may also bring the known extent of the forest in Antarctica during the Early Eocene even closer than 400 miles to the South Pole.

55 million years ago the Earth was largely a planet of continental forests virtually from pole to pole. The oceanic circulation patterns appear to more evenly distributed differentials in heat energy around the planet, which suppressed climactic extremes.

Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.

Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.

He said the Earth was entering the “first hot period” for 60 million years, when there was no ice on the planet and “the rest of the globe could not sustain human life”. The warning – one of the starkest delivered by a top scientist – comes as ministers decide next week whether to weaken measures to cut the pollution that causes climate change, even though Tony Blair last week described the situation as “very, very critical indeed”.

The Prime Minister – who was launching a new alliance of governments, businesses and pressure groups to tackle global warming – added that he could not think of “any bigger long-term question facing the world community”.

Yet the Government is considering relaxing limits on emissions by industry under an EU scheme on Tuesday.

Sir David said that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the main “green- house gas” causing climate change – were already 50 per cent higher than at any time in the past 420,000 years. The last time they were at this level – 379 parts per million – was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life.

“No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life,” he said.

Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels “we will reach that level by 2100″.

… the science was “settled” in 1896 – all it takes is massive computer power to work out how much the temp rises with rising CO2 levels….

Obviously as a chemist he is not aware of the computer term rubbish in, rubbish out….

Heh.

Back in the dark ages of the 70s, I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. I will never forget this quote from one of the best professors I have ever had the pleasure of studying under: “Never draw vast conclusions from half-vast data.”

This was his way of enunciating the Computer Science phrase known in the States as garbage in, garbage out. There wasn’t a Computer Science program on campus at the time, though there were computer courses taught under the School of Engineering.

LOL ;). I suspect that even the great chemist Svante Arrhenius would understand the concept, even if he had never heard someone say it.

55 million years ago the Earth was largely a planet of continental forests virtually from pole to pole. The oceanic circulation patterns appear to more evenly distributed differentials in heat energy around the planet, which suppressed climactic extremes.

Sounds like paradise to me, except for all those dinosaurs, big crocks and bugs the size of my dog. I could see just how this could happen. Because of the modulating influence of water, the tropics would not get much hotter than presently with increased solar radiation (or other forcings), so the extra heat would simply be pushed poleward. The “tropics” might cover an area from 60 N to 60 S.

Re 82
No dinosaurs, in fact no big animals at all. They had all died out at the K/Pg boundary 10 million years before. As a matter of fact the absence of large herbivores may have been part of the explanation of the world-wide tropical/paratropical forests.
And as for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere then the uncertainty is huge. And so is the reason for the PETM (Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum). What we know for sure is that a very large amount of isotopically light carbon was abruptly added to the atmosphere. The official PC explanation is a big methane hydrate “burp”, but this would have to be incredibly large compared to the amounts of methane hydrates known to exist today. I’ve seen at least five other explanations.

Volcanic eruptions by the Iceland Hot Spot (which started at exactly that time)

Carbon “cooked out” from sedimentary rocks by those eruptions

Elevation of the continents around the North Atlantic by the Iceland Hot Spot drained large shallow seas and the carbon-rich bottom deposits oxidized rapidly

Cometary impact(s) (Yes, there is a lot of isotopically light carbon in comets)

Combinations of the above.

Incidentally one should be careful about making sweeping conclusions about the PETM and its effects. While we have a lot of information about conditions in the sea, our data on the effects on land is, frankly, almost completely based on what happened in Wyoming.

RE: “55 million years ago the Earth was largely a planet of continental forests virtually from pole to pole. The oceanic circulation patterns appear to more evenly distributed differentials in heat energy around the planet, which suppressed climactic extremes.”

3. DOE/NASA/NSF scientists insist that H-fusion is the energy source that powers the Sun and the cosmos, despite astronomical observations and nuclear mass data which indicate that repulsive forces between neutrons is even more powerful than H-fusion.

Uh, oh! Do you understand how the strong force works? In any case, I’m sure Steve would / will tell you to take this sort of thing to untreaded or elsewhere.

The public does not care if the Sun is made of Iron or Hydrogen; The public does not care if neutrinos oscillate; The public does not care if H-fusion or neutron repulsion powers the Sun; The public does not care if orbital motions of the planets induce solar cycles.

The public does not care anymore because these alternative notions are erroneous and one day the public might also not care about AGW depending on which inconvenient truth prevails.

Fifty-five million years ago was a time when there was no ice on the earth; the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals, because it was the coolest place, and the rest of the earth was rather inhabitable because it was so hot.

Did he mean “reasonably habitable” in which case everything was fine and there is little to worry about, or “almost uninhabitable” in which case Singer seems more justified? Fire safety officers have banned the word “inflammable” because of similar confusions.

Tobis is worried you get too many hits? He better not discover Alexa.com! If he enters climateaudit.org, wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com and realclimate.org, he won’t be able to sleep at night!

Steve: The comment volumes are very different. I compared comment volumes last October over a couple of weeks at RC and CA and ours was running about 10 times higher than theirs. Obviously placing more trust in the commenters; moderating after the fact and encouraging and permitting debate leads to more volume here, which is obviously overwhelming to say the least, as is Anthony’s.

SteveMc–
I agree that placing more trust in comments leads to more traffic & visits. It also makes the comment threads more readable because the response to a comment is often remotely near the comment itself! Heavy moderation, with no one scheduled to approve promptly, results in comments that go like this:

I end up finding reading the comment thread totally unenjoyable, and generally uninformative. So I often don’t load comments, and rarely bother to comment.

Since I hate that sort of comment thread, I decided to make not moderating a priority. Admittedly, due to relatively small volume, I haven’t attracted many trolls. But, if I do, I’m going to modify the “SlowDownBorderlineTroll” plugin to permit me to just click a comment by any semi-troll, and do magic things to their comments. ( I’ve managed to repel two trolls, while not repelling any people who really post comments!) :)

In his current posting on this topic, Tobis comments that no one in the climate science community engages with Steve McIntyre. There are then a number of comments from others which discuss the operation of Climate Audit.

Ping. Since David King’s in the news. I thought that the conclusion of this post was appropriate. One of the odd consequences of the Ofcom decision was that Channel Four was supposed to apologize to David King. I suggested then:

the appropriate mea culpa would be for Channel 4 to dryly apologize for holding the Chief Scientist up to ridicule by incorrectly attributing to him Lovelock’s view that humanity would survive through Antarctic breeding couples, when they should properly said that his views on breeding were that hot girls who find “supercar drivers “sexy”, … should divert their affections to men who live more environmentally-friendly lives.”

As my (very – 40 years) old friend Terry would say, facing two young women coming in our direction, ‘Don’t fancy yours so much.’ I follow Climate Audit, and don’t have the expertise to contribute to most threads, but with this one …

Dr. Strangelove’s description and recommendation about how to keep the male survivors’ interest up in the deep shelters it was going to be necessary to populate with the elite after the Doomsday Bomb had detonated comes to mind …